Ghost-stories are rare in Venice. There is another that one usually hears. It concerns a house called "haunted." It stands on the most easterly point of Venice, and is spoken of as the "Casa degli Spiriti." The old women say that "once upon a time" a fine young Venetian lived there with a charming bride, and the friend who had been their groomsman visited them frequently. He was godfather to their first child, which is a very sacred relation in Venice, and is called "Compare di San Zuan." After a time the young wife and the compare fell in love with each other. The husband knew this very well, and all three of them were most unhappy.
Just then the compare died; and so greatly did the lady suffer that she grieved herself ill, and was about to die. Her faithful maid knew all the story of her love and grief, and with her last breath her mistress begged that when she was dead no one else should be permitted to watch beside her; and although the other servants would gladly have kept the vigil, the maid was left alone beside her dead mistress.
At midnight the door opened, and the dead compare came in. The maid could neither move nor cry out, and the ghost raised his dead love up, and she began to dress. When she was ready, the ghost took her arm, and signed to the maid to light them on their way. Then the three went down, down to the very lowest vault beneath the house; and there the compare struck the torch from the hand of the maid, and she swooned on the floor.
Thus runs the story of the old women; but there are other explanations of the name of this old house, which even now bears traces of its former beauty, though the whole edifice is going to wrack and ruin. A second story is quite as gruesome as the first, since it says that here dead bodies were brought by medical students, and autopsies made before they were buried in San Michele, which is very near. This is the view adopted by J. A. Symonds, who says:—
"Yonder square white house, standing out to sea, fronting Murano and the Alps, they call the Casa degli Spiriti. No one cares to inhabit it; for here, in old days, it was the wont of the Venetians to lay their dead for a night's rest before their final journey to the graveyard of S. Michele. So many generations of dead folk had made that house their inn, that it is now no fitting house for living men."
But a pleasanter explanation is, that long ago an artistic and literary society held its meetings here, and from the beaux esprits who habitually gathered beneath its roof, it came to be called the Casa degli Spiriti.
Perhaps the most amusing Venetian ghost-story is that of the parish priest of San Marcuola, who declared his disbelief in ghosts in a sermon, and exclaimed, "Where the dead are, there they stay!" This made the ghosts of those who had been buried in San Marcuola very indignant, and they revenged themselves by going at night, in a body, to the chamber of this priest, whom they dragged out of bed, tossed about, and soundly thrashed for the insult he had put on them.
Meantime, while this story-telling has gone on, it has grown quite dark, and as we come into the canals, the calls, Stalì, Premè, are very frequent. These cries of the gondoliers are curiously startling, especially at night; but the celerity with which they are obeyed, and the narrow escapes from accidents, prove their usefulness. Stalir means go to the right; Premier, go to the left; and Sciar, or Siar, means that the boat is to be stopped by turning the flat side of the oar against the current. Monckton Milnes prettily explains this in his verses:—
"When along the light ripple the far serenade
Has accosted the ear of each passionate maid,
She may open the window that looks on the stream,—
She may smile on her pillow and blend it in dream;
Half in words, half in music, it pierces the gloom,
'I am coming—stalì—but you know not for whom!
Stalì—not for whom!'